


A Voice in Any Other Tone

by Iron



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Amica relationships are sweet, Body Modification, Gen, Post-War, Pre-MTMTE, Rodimus thinks his amica is perfect just the way he is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24208459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: ... Is just as sweet.Post-Great War, Drift finds his voice coming between him and his desire to find peace in this new world they’re starting to build. Rodimus takes him shopping for another one.
Relationships: Rodimus&Drift
Comments: 18
Kudos: 52





	A Voice in Any Other Tone

**Author's Note:**

> For [@deceptirod](https://twitter.com/deceptirod)! If you like my work, join me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/fab_roddy).

Rodimus loves listening to Drift talk. 

The rise and fall of his voice is almost melodic, Dead End-smooth syllables sliding against each other with Decepticon-sharp consonants, air hissing over his glossa between drawn-out, lazy vowels. It’s something caught between the predatory growl of an electrolion and the dangerous hiss of a Vosnian Viper. It’s velvet darkness and dangerous. Rodimus could listen to him talk for hours just for the sound of his voice. 

The NAILs and their fellow Autobots, newly returned to Cybertron, unfortunately, don’t agree. 

It was Rodimus’s idea to introduce themselves to the arriving NAILs, the term coined barely three days ago by an increasingly irate Prowl. “We’re here, they’re here, we’re going to have to live together. Might as well try to make peace.” 

“We’re meant to be at peace.” 

“Peace is what we make it. And right now we’re trying to make _something_. So let’s go talk to them! See what they’re like, make friends.” 

“Most of them hate us.” 

“And you hated me, the first time we met. I won you over then, I can win them over now.” 

“You are remarkably good at that.” 

“C’mon, I know you’ve already done your meditation for the day, you don’t have anything _else_ to do.” 

“I could have plans!” 

“But you don’t.” 

“...but I don’t.” He sighs, smiling to himself as Rodimus slings an arm over his shoulder and leads him outside of Kimia. “You’ve been keeping track of my schedule?” 

“I keep track of all of my friends.” He nudges them into the sunlight, and into the collection of mechs that always seem to be outside of Kimia these days. There are altmodes in the crowd that he hasn’t seen since the war started, mechs not carrying weapons or bulked up with excess armor. “I think Bumblebee is on greetings today, we can go do that with him.” 

They wind their way through the crowds, until they break through into the landing area. Above their helms they can see a ship coming down to land, guided by mechs in the command bay. The greeting party is keeping well out of the way as they come down. 

Drift can almost taste Rodimus’s eagerness as the ship lands, ramp unfolding to reveal their first glimpse of the crew. He reaches up and pets the bottom edge of his spoiler wing, squeezing the warm metal between his fingers soothingly. The mechs that descend are varied in frame type in a way that Drift has come to associate with NAILs the last few weeks, in that way that means they never had to change their frames to suit the war, though he recognizes some as MTO-style altmodes and realizes that they’d had done it the other way around. He hadn’t realized that the NAILs had gone so far as to alter warframes for non-combat. _Would the Autobots ever be able to do that? Will I?_

He shakes his helm, brushing the thought aside as Rodimus breaks away from the bystanders gathered up behind Metalwing and Bumblebee. He bounces up past both of the nascent leaders of Cybertron, lighting up the world around him with a full-frame smile. Drift follows at a more sedate pace, shooting Bumblebee an apologetic look as his amica shakes hands with the clearly startled captain. 

“Greetings from a brand new fragging Cybertron! Yeah, everything’s different, whole fragging world’s gone topsy turvy, we’re working things out -“ Rodimus is talking too fast, words falling and tumbling over each other, and Drift steps into his space to help keep him slow. 

“Welcome to the new Cyberton. We’re glad to see more of our comrades returned home.” 

The mech looks at him with wide optics, and all Pit breaks loose. 

— 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Rodimus knocks shoulders with Drift, “You should know that, at least.” 

“They were quite fine with you talking to them.” 

“That’s because I’m handsome, charming, an _excellent_ public speaker -“ 

“Rodimus!” 

“It wasn’t your voice!” 

“The minibot starting crying and begging me not to kill him.” 

“He was a coward.” 

“He was a war veteran.” 

“That doesn’t mean he’s not a coward!” 

“He called me Deadlock, started crying, and then panic purged on your peds while begging me not to kill him.” 

“It could have been the look in your optics?” Rodimus scratches the edge of his jaw, studying the star-studded Cybertronian sky. You couldn’t see the sky in Nyon. He’d never seen the stars on his own home planet before the war. They look like the stars on any of the thousands of other worlds he’s seen. _People wrote poems and slag about this?_ “There’s nothing wrong with you.” 

“I sound like a walking death machine, according to Swerve.” 

“Yeah, but Swerve’s a slagger.” 

“He might also be right. I still have the same voxcoder I had when I was Forged, I still sound like the same mech I was when I was a Decepticon. People keep recognizing me. We can’t have peace when everyone knows the moment I open my mouth that I shouldn’t be walking free.” 

“Where are you going with this?” 

Drift frowns. “I guess... I just. I don’t want to remind people of what I’ve done every time I speak to them.” 

“So you want a new voxcoder?” 

“I want a chance to let go completely of the mech I was.” 

“So. New voxcoder, we deal with the whole ‘you sound like Deadlock’ thing, and you’ll be good?” 

“...yeah, Roddy, we deal with me sounding like my mass-murdering prior identity and I’ll be good.” 

“Good. So let’s go buy a new voxcoder off of some NAILs or something.” He bumps their shoulders together, optics already roaming up and down the rows of ships that have come to surround Kimia. Mechs have started setting up shops outside, selling off their excess supplies, or the things they’ve managed to make a career out of trading while they were avoiding the War. “ _Someone_ here has to be selling that slag.” 

“The very building blocks of our frame and sense of identity, you mean?” 

“I’m more than my voice.” Rodimus steps towards a chop shop spilling out of some mech’s ship, parts laid out on a bright blue tarp. “Seems like they’ve got a couple of mechs’ worth of parts here.” He turns blue optics on the jet bot selling it, sprawled thighs akimbo in a spindly chair of black pipes and blue netting. He’s drinking double-filtered engex through a bright green curly straw. It matches his paint. “You got a voxcoder?” 

The mech lets the straw go with a long _schlorp_ , tilting the can’s opening towards Rodimus. “Got five. Who for?” 

“It’s for the lurker.” Rodimus jerks a thumb over his shoulder, where Drift is lingering by what looks like a modern art installation but might be a suit of armor. “He wants something a bit smoother than what he’s got.” 

Drift turns his shoulders deliberately towards what he’s beginning to think might be bikini armor for a very large tank, or full-body armor for a very strangely built bot. 

“Don’t seem like he’s looking for much.” 

“He’s awkward. And he doesn’t want you to try shooting him.” 

The mech points his drink at Rodimus again. Each word he says is enunciated by a shake of that can, end of his straw wagging at him. “I don’t do that slag. Dead mechs don’t pay - and your mech over there looks rich.” 

“We get by. Where’s ...?” 

He points his waggling straw at a corner of the tarp. “Over there. Press the green button to hear what they sound like.” 

Rodimus nods, takes three steps back to wrap one hand around Drift’s shoulder. He drags him stumbling over his own peds closer to the tarp, and drops down to his knee. It bashes into what might be a mech’s jaw if a mech were interested in denta longer than his fingers and sends it rolling into a collection of glossas. “So. What do you want to sound like?” The five voxcoders are hooked up to a speaker, since the voxcoders themselves don’t have any. 

“I... hadn’t really thought of that.” 

Rodimus shoves three of them out of the way immediately. From the polytonic readings on the side of the modules, 2 of them are far higher in pitch output than Rodimus would expect Drift to want, and the third has a pitch so low it’d probably vibrate the damn ground rather than make anything actually audible. “So we’ve got two. You want to go higher or lower?” 

“Maybe we should listen to both?” He picks one up, rolling it around in his hands until he finds the small test button on the side. “I just press it and...” 

“It’ll use a test phrase to give you a general idea of what you’ll sound like. Since mechs all have different ways of speaking, even if you have the same model as another mech you won’t _sound_ like that mech. This will just give you a different tonal profile.” Drift glances up at Rodimus. The other racer flushes. “I worked in a chop shop.” 

“It’s useful.” He smiles, expression gentled like he’d practiced. Non-Decepticons don’t like seeing fangs when you smile. “Maybe you can help me install it.” 

“Don’t know how good I’d be, honestly.” Rodimus laughs. He presses the button on the voxcoder in his hands, optics still on Drift. “This one first, then.” 

_**POWER FLOWS TO THE ONE WHO KNOWS HOW. DESIRE ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH!**_

Rodimus jerks his helm to the left, shoulders jumping up around his audials. “That-“ 

“Sounded exactly like Megatron.” Drift looks down at the voxcoder in his own hands. “Which would be a cold construct model issued before the war, and also a terrible idea to adopt.” 

“I don’t know. Could be interesting. We could have you record sex tapes and slap his name on them. We’d make a slag ton of shanix.” 

“That is a terrible idea.” 

“It’s a _great_ idea, you’re just afraid.” 

“We’d be murdered. Probably tortured.” 

“We’d go out as _legends_!” 

It’s only the fact that Drift can hear his systems hiccuping, fans stuttering, engine turning over with the effort to suppress his laughter, that Rodimus is joking. “Then you should get it. Tarnish sounds closer to Nyan than anything near the Dead End, anyways.” 

“And lose my dulcet tones? _Never_.” He drops the voxbox back to the tarp. “Go on, try yours.” 

Drift looks down at it doubtfully. “Okay...” 

_**The Cog of the Great Machine lives on in the Collective Masses, keeping the Grand Machine of the Cybertronian Sphere turning. File 458, Line 36, ‘The Grand Cybertronian Sphere’.**_

The sample has a high, sweet tenor with roughly two entire note variations, and it’s dull enough in tone to make even Drift - whose entire interest in a new voice was just in sounding like someone _else_ \- bristle. “... I’m guessing this was surplus from the Autobot’s pre-war stockpile?” 

“Frag, I hope so. And you’re not getting that one, I won’t let you. I’m not letting go off sounding like some drone.” 

“I think you’re fine.” He lets it roll into back onto the tarp. “We should probably find someone who has a few more options.” 

“Or at least one where the option isn’t Megatron or a drone.” 

Drift lets Rodimus lean against him as he stands, bringing them both to their peds. They both ignore the scowling salesmech as they pick their way through the mess of parts and back onto the street proper. “That wasn’t promising.” 

“So we’ll keep looking. We’ll find you something good.” 

“I know.” He leans towards Rodimus, letting their fields mingle. He modulates his own until they fall into roughly the same frequency, pressed close together by the crowd around them. If this were before the war, if they were different, Rodimus would wrap an arm around his shoulders, and they’d fall in step with each other. Rodimus might lean in and whisper in his audial, poking fun at the NAILs around them, or leading him to look at something new and shiny - 

“Oh, someone’s selling fuel. You wanna go get - looks like rust sticks, kind of - you wanna try something _new_?” 

“New meaning...” He can never be too sure with Roddy. He’d eat the gunked up oil from a transport engine if you poured enough sticky sweet oil on it. 

“That guy?” Rodimus points to some mech fishing chunks of metal out of a plastic vat, dumping them into a tray of rust powder to coat and then serving them up with a pair of tongs in tin cups. “Smells like fuel.” 

Drift goes when Rodimus pulls on him. The mech, sitting at a table with what looks like half his crew behind him, folding metal into baskets and painting details on discarded metal sheets, smiles when he sees them. “And how can I help you?” His voice is low and smooth, an alien accent hanging off slurred consonants. 

Rodimus leans over the mouth of the barrel, letting his vent slats open as wide as he can. “How much would an order of these run me?” 

“What’ve you got to trade?” 

There’s not even a spoken request. Rodimus holds out his hand to Drift, and Drift drops a handful of loose currency into his palm. “Looks like... fourteen shanix, a Speculian _Ruvel_ , three credits, and a disk full of - oh, Helexite meditation music. Drift, take this back.” 

The mech looks disappointed when the disk is shoved back into Drift’s subspace, but he takes the credits easily enough, and they get a cupful of crunchy, rust coated nuggets in turn. 

Rodimus turns a blinding smile on the unsuspecting mech. “You’ve been here a while, haven’t you?” 

“Um. I guess, mech. We were pretty close by when the signal to come back got sent out.” 

“So you know what the mechs around here are selling?” 

Drift nudges himself behind Rodimus, pinching one of the nuggets between the pads of his dulled claws. It’s spicy-sweet and crunches between his denta in a way that satisfies something deep inside him. He watches Rodimus turn a blinding smile on the poor mech, who has no idea the kind of thing he’s facing. 

“Usually.” The mech leans back, the legs of his chair creaking. A captain’s chair! Drift brightens as the name comes to mind, finally. He should get one for Rodimus; the room they have in Kimia is nearly empty. “Why?” 

The mech’s crew is looking at them. So are the crews on either side of them; one looks like they’re trying to pawn off pretty rocks, while the other doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all, just sprawling out in the sun and playing a game with dice and cards. 

“We’re looking for a voxcoder. We want a _good_ selection - maybe a medical crew or something selling em - you know, so we can have a choice.” 

_Crunch_. Rodimus is saying ‘we’, like it isn’t obvious who this is for. He’s good like that. He understands Drift’s need for privacy, even if anyone who looked at him could tell who the voxcoder was for. 

“Few rows down, white ship with red markings, big yellow engines. They’re medical, Neutrals I think, not former badges. They ought to have something for ya.” The mech hooks a thumb over his shoulder, pointing off towards where the Manganese Mountains used to be. “They’ll set you up with just about anything if you’ve got the credits.” 

“Thanks.” Rodimus flicks another credit at him, straightening and turning towards Drift. “NAILs were useful for once. Let’s get going.” 

“Rude.” Not that Drift would stop him, but still. The mech _had_ been helpful, and the little crusty gell balls are delicious. 

“And?” 

“You should try to be more diplomatic. We have to live with these mechs now.” 

“ _You_ say that. I say that these mechs should have to live with _us_.” He scowls in the general direction of the sky, wrapping a hand around the jutting, bottom portion of Drift’s shoulder panel to drag him through the rows of ships. “We won the planet back. They should be coming to us, trying to integrate with us, not - _ugh_.” 

“You’re really worked up over this. You seemed happy enough earlier.” 

“I’m just -“ He waves his free hand through the air, gesturing in the vague direction of the bots around them, then steals a nugget from the cup in Drift’s hands. “We won. It should feel like we won by now. Instead we’re arguing with every mech that comes off a ship.” 

“It will.” Drift holds out the cup for him. “Everyone’s still settling in. We have more people coming home every day.” 

“Or it won’t.” Neither of them acknowledge the graffiti on some of the ships around them - _Hammer down the NAILs_ and _The Badgeless have rights!_ , in dripping paint. Some of them had been crossed out and something else written over it, and it makes Rodimus uneasy. They’d had graffiti like that in Nyon. “C’mon, I see the ship.” 

‘The ship’ is one of the few ones in the area they’d walked into without any visible graffiti at all. It was clean, the white of the ship almost blinding under the late afternoon sun, with the only sign that they were open to being purchased from the lowered ramp and small sign by the door. That, and the mech clearly hired to guard the entrance. He nods to them as they walk up the ramp, one hand on the grip of the gun magnetized to his hip. The Autobot badge on his chest isn’t as comforting as it should be. “Welcome to the _Wandering Forge_ , all weapons must be sub spaced at all times, please don’t leave the ship with any merchandise you haven’t paid for, and respect the medics inside.” His voice is a dull drone, like he’s done this a hundred times a day since the ship landed. 

“Right.” Drift passes off the almost-empty cup to remove his swords, subspacing them reluctantly. He can’t remember the last time he was required to removed his weapons, even just to leave them in his subspace. Somehow the idea that being constantly battle-ready was just _normal_ had sunk its teeth into broader Cybertronian society. Or - no, not Cybertronian society, Autobot and Decepticon society. _War cultures_. The existence of the NAILs makes that clear; the Cybertronians who fought, and the ones who didn’t, see the universe through different optics. 

Rodimus waits at the top of the ramp for him, half in and half out of the ship. “Looks clean in there. Organized. We should tell Prowl about them, see if we can get them to volunteer and work with Ratchet.” 

“I don’t think they’d appreciate us setting Prowl on them.” He steps in beside Rodimus, taking in the broad, open area of the ship’s bay. Rows of shelves spread out in front of them, filled with bins of carefully labeled parts. The lights overhead are bright, and the ship is clean. There’s not even a paint scrape in sight. “Wow.” 

“Yup. Like I said - impressive.” He wanders up one aisle, poking his nose into bins. Drift can feel the mech from the ramp staring at them, and he tries not to feel offended by it. 

“I can’t believe things are actually where they say they are. C’mon, I think I see something in the corner -“ 

“Can I help you?” 

They both almost startle out of their armor when the kid pops up in front of them, Rodimus’s temperature jumping high enough to make the air around him shimmer, and Drift with a sword in his hand before he realized that it was just a kid. MTO frame, Autobot model, clearly not a typical medical frame but in medic colors. Drift subspaces the sword with a glance at the bristling guard by the door. He was probably one wrong twitch away from being shot. “Don’t you know better than to sneak up on people?” 

The bot cocks his helm. “Yup! But I’m _also_ supposed to help customers who look lost, and you two looked _very_ lost.” 

Rodimus puffs up, frame cooling as he realizes that it’s just some forgeling. “We’re fine, thanks.” 

“But I can help! I know where everything is in here, even stuff that we don’t _technically_ list on the stock registry. We have weapons, mods, weird slag we don’t really know the reason for but kept because we _really_ wanted to see who’d buy it-“ 

“We’re looking for a voxcoder. Mid-range tonal selection. You have any?” 

The bot pouts at them. “We do! One of the easiest parts of the frame to repurpose.” He turns smartly on his heel, leading them deeper into the ship. “I’ll show you!” 

The back of the ship, beyond the aisles, is dedicated to showcases. Rodimus can see one meant for faces, the disembodied masks moving along preprogrammed expressions. Sad, then happy, then rage-filled. The optics flare and crackle. 

“Here’s our voxcoder display! We have over a hundred different models available to choose from! All you have to do is input your desired tonal range, and it will pull up the models that fall into that range. Then you just speak into the microphone and it repeats the phrase back at you in the voxcoder model’s voice, preserving your own tonal patterns for the most accurate prediction of what you would sound like with that model!” 

Drift pauses. “... Why didn’t the other ones do that?” 

Rodimus nudges the kid aside to stare at the stand. “Because the other ones were made for normal mechs, not rich bots.” 

“Our system’s unique. Built it myself!” The kid crosses his arms, puffed up and offended by being pushed aside. 

The display looks like a microphone glued on to vending machines. There were three sets of speakers built into the sides of it at varying heights, with a glass front on the left side displaying the voxcoders packaged in boxes and a small screen set into the metal fronting on the right. As they watch, the computer screen lights up with a display. “Just type in the tonal range you want.” The kid stomps off, disappearing back into the aisles. 

“...Weirdo.” Rodimus inches forward. “Okay, how high do you want your voice to go?” 

“Dunno. I guess not higher than yours? Or much lower.” 

“Your voice is lower than mine right now.” 

“I don’t _want_ to sound like myself. That’s the point.” 

“That doesn’t mean you have to sound like a stranger.” Rodimus types in the tonal range as Drift stares over his shoulder, pecking each button individually. “I like your voice.” 

“You do?” 

“It sounds like a well-tuned engine.” Rodimus nudges the microphone towards Drift, who’s happily plastered himself against Rodimus’s spoiler, hands on his waist. “Okay, I picked one that’s only like, a little bit off from my model. Just say something into the mic.” 

“Like what?” 

_**Like what?** _

The voice that comes out of the machine is low, but higher than Rodimus’s, with a lyrical lilt to it. Paired with the rasping, sharp quality of his voice, it sounds like a whispered threat. 

“... Attractive.” 

“Doesn’t it sound a little dangerous, still?” He reaches around Rodimus to flick through the models. “Maybe if we went a little lower?” 

“Try this one.” Rodimus taps a model number on the menu screen. “It’s a little lower.” 

Drift throws him worried looks as he leans over Rodimus’s shoulder again, muttering into the mic. “I don’t really know how well these are going to fit me, if any do.” 

The machine spits the phrase back out again, lower than Drift’s current model. It sounds like fragging, dark and velvet, wrapping one hand around Rodimus’s fuel pump and _tugging_. “... maybe not that one.” 

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to beat people off you with a stick, babe. We’ll pick the next model up.” 

“It’s not that bad -“ 

“It’s not bad, it’s _too good_.” Rodimus flicks up the list of models. “Here, try this one. Just a little higher.” 

Drift rolls his optics. “Okay, okay.” 

Rodimus wiggles his spoiler. “Talk now.”

“Has anyone told you that you’re weirdly jealous?” 

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting my amica-“ 

_**Has anyone told you that you’re weirdly jealous?**_

“-aaaah, that’s _perfect_.” 

Drift wrinkles his nose up. “It’s too high. And it has a weird screechy undertone.” 

“You think?” 

“It sounds like Starscream.” Drift picks one that has a simpler output. “This one?” 

_**This one?**_

“... that. This is Prowl.” 

“We’re not picking that one.” 

“We are _not_ ,” Rodimus agrees, flicking through the list. “Okay, so this one should be perfect. No tonal undertones, not to high, not too low, no underlying rasp.” 

“You’re making me sound picky.” 

“You _are_ picky.” 

“This _is_ my voice.” 

_**This is my voice**_. 

Both of them go very still. The voice is higher than Rodimus’s, with a rasp that clings to the edges of sharp consonants. The cadence of the undertones is even and calm, smooth on the vowels, with just enough tonal change to keep a mech’s attention. “It’s perfect.” 

Drift nudges the mic away. “It’ll do. We just swipe a credpad and the voxcoder comes out?” 

“Packaged up nice and everything. This place is fancy.” 

Drift pays. It’s not like Rodimus has actual credits, after all - the Autobots didn’t pay their soldiers - and they watch with a vague sort of fascination as a robotic arm inside the box plucks up the named model and drops it into the delivery slot. It _is_ packaged, emblazoned with the ship’s name on one side. “Looks like comes with an installation kit.” 

They wander out back towards the ramp. Drift pretends not to hear it when the guardsmech leans in and mutters that they “shouldn’t come back this way again.” 

“I’ll do the install in our quarters. Shouldn’t be hard. You happy?” 

“...yeah. Yeah, I’m happy.” 

— 

Later, Rodimus sleeping sprawled across his berth and their hab smelling vaguely like his own internals, Drift sits near the window overlooking their new Cybertron and hums to himself. He meanders up and down keys, feeling out the limits of this part of himself. He can hit higher notes than he could before. He falls into static easier when he tries the deeper ones. Whispering no longer sounds inherently threatening. 

He feels like he’s listening to someone else. Like he’s become a stranger to himself again. For every frame change he’s ever undergone - in the streets, with the Decepticons, in Crystal City, with the Autobots - he’s never let them change his voice. He’d wanted to remember himself by that, if that alone. He’d wanted people to always know it was _him_. 

“It’s time to forget.” The words come out silky smooth and louder than he’d intended.

Rodimus twitches, optics flickering, then flaring as he tries to shake himself away. He’s never been a sound sleeper. “Hng?” 

“It’s nothing. Go back into recharge.” 

“‘Kay, Drift. Night.” He rolls over, curling his knees up towards his chest in a show of utter trust in Drift. Once, the former Decepticon had thought he’d never experience trust like that again. Even after leaving him behind on Earth, Rodimus trusts him. In the glow of Cybertron’s remaining moon he looks like something spun from spark light. 

Drift turns his optics back out to the nascent civilization trying to rebuilt itself outside his window, and tells himself that they’re ready for peace. They have to find some sort of peace.


End file.
